Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/520

 498 ITALY [LITERATURE. thoroughly characterized by homogeneity and oneness, as if it had come forth in a single cast from the furnace, than the Italian. But on the other hand it remains equally true that, so far as concerns a living confidence and uniformity in the use and style of the literary language that is, of this Tuscan or Florentine material called to nourish the civilization and culture of all the Italians the case is not a little altered, and the Italian nation appears to enjoy less fortunate conditions than other nations of Europe. Modern Italy had no glowing centre for the life of the whole nation into which and out of which the collective thought and language could be poured in ceaseless current for all and by all. Florence has not been Paris. Territorial contiguity and the little difference of the local dialect facilitated in the modern Rome the elevation of the language of conversation to a level with the literary language that came from Tuscany. A form of speech was thus produced which, though certainly destitute of the grace and the abundant flexibility of the Florentine, gives a good idea of what the dialect of a city becomes when it makes itself the language of a nation that is ripening its civilization in many and dissimilar centres. In such a case the dialect loses its slang and petty localisms, and at the same time also some what of its freshness; but it learns to express with more con scious sobriety and with more assured dignity the thought and the feeling of the various peoples which are fused in one national life. But what took place readily in Rome could not with equal ease happen in districts whose dialects were far removed from the Tuscan. In Piedmont, for example, or in Lombardy, the language of conversation did not correspond with the language of books, and the latter accordingly became artificial and laboured. Poetry was least affected by these unfortunate conditions ; for poetry may work well with a multiform language, where the need and the stimulus of the author s individuality assert them selves more strongly. But prose suffered immensely, and the Italians had good cause to envy the spontaneity and confidence of foreign literatures of the French more par ticularly, la this reasonable envy lay the justification and the strength of the Manzoni school, which aimed at that absolute naturalness of the literary language, that absolute identity between the language of conversation and that of books, which the bulk of the Italians could reach and maintain only by naturalizing themselves in the living speech of modern Florence. The revolt of Manzoni against artificiality and mannerism in language and* st)le was worthy of his genius, and has been largely fruitful. But the historical difference between the case of France (with the colloquial language of Paris) and that of Italy (with the colloquial language of Florence) implies more than one difficulty of principle ; in the latter case there is sought to be produced by deliberate effort of the literati what in the former has been and remains the necessary and spon taneous product of the entire civilization. Manzoni s theories too easily lent themselves to deplorable exaggera tions; men fell into a new artificiality, a manner of writing which might be called vulgar and almost slangy. The remedy for this must lie in the regulating power of the labour of the now regenerate Italian intellect, a labour ever growing wider in its scope, more assiduous, and more thoroughly united. Literature. Fernow in the third volume of his RiJmisclic Studien (Zurich, 1806-8) gave a good survey of the dialects of Italy. The dawn of rigorously scientific methods had not then appeared ; but Pernow s view is wide and genial. Similar praise is due to Biondelli a work Sui dialetti gallo-italici (Milan, 1853), which, however, is still ignorant of Diez. Fuchs, between Fernow and Biondelli, had made himself so far acquainted with the new methods ; but his explora tion (Ueber die sogenannten unregelmassigcn Zcitwortcr in den Eomanisclicn Sprachen, nebst Andeutungen fiber die wichtigsten romanischcn Mundarten, Berlin, 1840), though certainly of utility, was not very successful. Nor can the rapid survey of the Italian dialects given by Diez be ranked among the happiest portions of his great masterpiece. Among the followers of l)iez who distin guished themselves in this department the first outside of Italy were certainly Mussafia, a cautious and clear continuator of the master, and the singularly acute Schuchardt. Next came the Archivio glottologico italiano (Rome, from 1873). In historical study applied speci ally to the literary language Nannucei prepared the way with much sagacity and breadth of view ; it .is enough to mention his Analisi criticn dei verbi italiani (Flor., 1844). Among the works of the disciples of the modern method may here be noted Canello, &quot; Gli allotropi italiani &quot; (Arch., iii. 285-419) and Caix, Originidclla lingua poetica italiana (Florence, 1880), which resolves itself into an accurate historical examination of the dialectal forms that occur in the old poetry. For almost a quarter of a century a matchless investigator, Giovanni Flechia, has devoted assiduous, keen, and genial labour to the history and description both of the dialects and of the literary language (see Arch., ii. 396, iii. 176). Biondelli s book is of no small service also for the numerous translations which it contains of the Prodigal Son into Lombard, Piedmontese, and Emilian dialects. A dialogue translated into the vernaculars of all parts of Italy will be found in Zuccagni Orlandini s Raccolta di dialetti italiani con illustrazioni ctnologiche (Florence, 1864). And every dialectal division is abundantly represented in a series of versions of a short novel of Boccaccio s, which Papanti has pub lished under the title I parlari italiani in Ccrtaldo, &c. (Leghorn, 1875). (G. I. A.) PART IV. LITERATURE. Condi tion of Italy hi the 1. Orif/ins. There is one characteristic fact that distin guishes the Italy of the Middle Ages with regard to its intellectual conditions, and that is the tenacity with which the Latin tradition clung to life. At the end of the 5th century the northern conquerors invaded Italy. The Roman world crumbled to pieces. A new kingdom arose at Ravenna under Theodoric, anil there learning was not extinguished. The liberal arts flourished, the very Gothic kings surrounded themselves with masters of rhetoric and of grammar. The names of Cassiodorus, of Boetius, of Symmachu.s, are enough to show how Latin thought main tained its power amidst the political effacement of the Roman empire. And this thought held its ground through out the subsequent ages and events. Thus, while elsewhere all culture had died out, there still remained in Italy some schools of laymen, 1 and some really extraordinary men were educated in them, such as Ennodius, a poet more T See Giesebreclit, De L dteraru;n Studiis apitd Italos primis Mcdii JEd Sxculis. Berlin, 1845. pagan than Christian, Arator, Fortuuatus, Venantius, Jovannicius, Felix the grammarian, Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, and many others, in all of whom we notice a contrast between the barbarous age they lived in and their aspiration towards a culture that should reunite them to the classical literature of Rome. The Italians never had much love for theological studies, and those who were addicted to them preferred Paris to Italy. It was some thing more practical, more positive, that had attraction for the Italians, and especially the study of Roman law. This zeal for tha study of jurisprudence furthered the establish ment of the mediaeval universities of Bologna, Padua, V cenza, Naples, Salerno, Moderia, and Parma ; and these, in their turn, helped to spread culture, and to prepare the ground in which the new vernacular literature was after wards to be developed. The tenacity of classical traditions, the affection for the memories of Rome, the preoccupation with political interests, particularly shown in the wars of the Lombard communes against the empire of thr Hohenstaufcns, a spirit more naturally inclined to practice